Rehman Rahi Kashmir’s first Jnanpith awardee, passes away
Rehman Rahi Kashmir’s first Jnanpith awardee, passes away: Professor Rehman Rahi, renowned poet and Kashmir’s first Jnanpith awardee took his last breath in the early hours on Monday at his residence in the Nowshera area of Kashmir. The well-known poet was 98 years old when he passed away. There are four kids left behind by him.
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About Rehman Rahi:-
- Rahi, who was born on May 6, 1925, published various books of poetry and translated into Kashmiri the writings of a number of well-known poets.
- He had started his career as a clerk in a government department in 1948 after which he continued his education and completed MA in Persian and English in 1950s and 60s. He was an academic at Kashmir University for most part of his life.
- Rahi won the Padma Shri in 2000 after winning the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961 for his poetry collection Nawroz-i-Saba.
- He received the highest literary honour of the country — Jnanpith award — in 2007 for his collection ‘Siyah Rood Jaeren Manz’ (In Black Drizzle).
About Sahitya Akademi Award:-
The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the 8th Schedule to the Indian constitution as well as in English and Rajasthani language.
The 1954-instituted award comprises of a plaque and a ₹1,000 cash reward. The award’s purpose is to recognise and promote excellence in Indian writing and also acknowledge new trends. The annual process of selecting awardees runs for the preceding twelve months. The Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray created the plaque presented by the Sahitya Akademi. Prior to this, the plaque occasionally was made of marble, but this practice was discontinued because of the excessive weight. During the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, the plaque was substituted with national savings bonds.
About Padma Shri:-
Padma Shri , also spelled Padma Shree, is the fourth-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of “distinguished contribution in various spheres of activity including the arts, education, industry, literature, science, acting, medicine, social service and public affairs”. Every year on India’s Republic Day, the Indian government presents it to the recipient.
About Jnanpith award:-
The Jnanpith Award is the oldest and the highest Indian literary award presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for their “outstanding contribution towards literature”. Instituted in 1961, the award is bestowed only on Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and English, with no posthumous conferral.
From 1965 till 1981, the award was given to the authors for their “most outstanding work” and consisted of a citation plaque, a cash prize and a bronze replica of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom. The inaugural winner of the prize was the Malayalam author G. Sankara Kurup, who took home the honour in 1965 for his 1950 poem collection Odakkuzhal (The Bamboo Flute). The rules were revised in subsequent years to consider only works published during the preceding twenty years, excluding the year for which the award was to be given and the cash prize was increased to ₹1.5 lakh (equivalent to ₹26 lakh or US$33,000 in 2020) from 1981.
Out of the twenty-three eligible languages, the cash prize has been revised to 11 lakh (equivalent to 14 lakh or ₹18,000 in 2020), and as of 2015, the award has been given for works in sixteen of those languages: Hindi (eleven), Kannada (eight), Bengali and Malayalam (six each), Gujarati, Marathi, Odia, and Urdu (four each), Assamese and Telugu (three each), Punjabi (one each). The award has been conferred upon fifty-eight writers including seven women authors. In 1976, Bengali novelist Ashapoorna Devi became the first woman to win the award and was honoured for the 1965 novel Prothom Protishruti (The First Promise), the first in a trilogy. The most recent recipients of the award are Assamese poet Nilmani Phookan and Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo, awarded for the years of 2021 and 2022 respectively.